While the 2012 edition is not as strong as last year’s field (quartet of 2800s), the world’s top five players in the world will pawn off in Moscow, Russia. Both Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand will obviously be missing from this year’s competition, but Magnus Carlen, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Teimour Radjabov and Hikaru Nakamura will grace the field. Italian champion Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk will add to the star power of the field. Evgeny Tomashevsky and Luke McShane round out the field.

This year there is a unique method of devising the pairings. A blitz tournament (with a separate prize fund) will determine the pairing numbers. With the winner getting #1, second getting #2 and so on. The top five in the blitz will get five whites and four blacks, but tiebreaks will give the advantage to those having played more games with black. Thus, the perception of playing the majority whites may be a mere illusion.

Note: Alexander Morozevich won the blitz tournament with superior tiebreaks over Magnus Carlsen. Morozevich beat Carlsen in their head-to-head encounter.